Immigration Reform 2014: Rubio Says Lack Of Republican Faith In Obama Downed Comprehensive Bill

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a one-time member of the Senate’s bipartisan “Gang of Eight” team on immigration, says Republicans’ distrust of President Barack Obama has all but defeated the chances of a comprehensive immigration reform’s passage. At least, not until the president leaves office in 2016. “One massive piece of legislation…is not going to pass,” Rubio told reporters during a breakfast organized by the paper. The Florida senator pointed to Republicans’ lack of faith that the president and the Department of Homeland Security would ensure that measures on US-Mexico border security in the Gang of Eight bill would be carried out according to the law.

"The central impediment to making progress on this issue was people would say to me, 'We understand that you put all this security stuff in the bill, but we don't think it matters and we just don't think government will enforce the law anyway,'" Rubio said, pointing to the administration’s handling of a 2012 attack on a government outpost in Libya as an example of a reason for conservative distrust. "'You can write whatever you want in that bill. But the federal government will not enforce the law.' As a result, they will just do the legalization part but they won't do the enforcement part."

The bill, which was passed by the Senate last June before dying in the Republican-led House, would have appropriated an extra $46 billion to surveillance technology and border-patrol agents on the US-Mexico border. It also would have required DHS to create and submit a strategy to establish 100 percent surveillance and a 90 percent border-crosser-apprehension rate. Republicans wanted the granting of legal status, green cards and citizenship to hinge on proof that the border-control goals had been achieved – and if not, for many of the benefits extended to currently undocumented immigrants to be rolled back.

Rubio was seen at points by Gang of Eight members as a partner of uncertain commitment to the notion of comprehensive reform, which in their bill would have included a 13-year path to citizenship for an estimated 8 million undocumented immigrants – an idea long unpopular with his Tea Party base. After the Gang finalized and unveiled the bill last May, Rubio told a town-hall audience he wanted to see more done on border-security, and soon after House Speaker John Boehner said that chamber’s Republican majority would reject the Senate bill and opt for a “piecemeal” approach on immigration, Rubio added his support. "I think it gets easier to address that issue if we deal with some of the other issues first,” he said then. “I think if people have real confidence that the law is being enforced, that we are not going to have this problem again, that there is real border security - I think you buy yourself more space and flexibility in finally dealing with those who are here illegally.”